"I've been programming professionally for about 3 years at this point, and I've noticed some interesting patterns in other programmers I've worked with. One of the key differentiators among programmers is motivation. I'm not referring to an individual's passion to simply be successful in their career, but rather the type of work they want to pursue. The thing they want to do with computers every day, the types of problems they are interested in solving."

Yes, sure... There's abs(). There are a gazillion other functions offered by various 3rd-party libraries for various purposes. Heck, one could even Google for solutions to basic programming problems. But a) we cannot always depend on 3rd-party solutions in real projects (most of the times we have to implement our own libraries or at least fork something that's closest to our requirements), and b) we need a programmer who can come up with good solutions without depending on Google Search.

If one doesn't remember such a basic thing he/she learned at school, what else has he/she forgotten?